outdoor education

In 2009 Oxford Junior Dictionary (Oxford University Press) revealed a list of the entries it no longer felt to be relevant to a modern-day childhood. So they deleted these words from the Junior dictionary. These are the words deleted:

acorn,

adder,

ash,

beech,

bluebell,

buttercup,

catkin,

cowslip,

cygnet,

dandelion,

fern,

hazel,

heather,

heron,

ivy,

kingfisher,

lark,

mistletoe,

nectar,

newt,

otter,

pasture and

willow.

The words taking their places in the new edition included attachment, block-graph, blog, broadband, bullet-point, celebrity,chatroom, committee, cut-and-paste, MP3 player and voice-mail.

When I was a child, I asked my mother what this was (see above), she said it was Nature. For some time after that, every time someone said the word, ‘Nature’, I imagined a dandelion seedhead.

“Humans seldom value what they cannot name.” – Elaine Brooks

About Jan Johnsen

Jan Johnsen is a professional landscape designer and a principal of the established design/build firm, Johnsen Landscapes & Pools, in Westchester County, NY. She was an adjunct professor at Columbia University and is an award-winning instructor at the New York Botanical Garden.

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'Heaven Is a Garden - Designing Serene Outdoor Spaces for Inspiration and Reflection'. This beautifully photographed guide offers great ideas for making your garden a place of serenity, filled with color, water, sound and more.